Psalm 139
Community is inescapable
139 Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up.
Even from far away, you comprehend my plans.
3 You study my traveling and resting.
You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways.
4 There isn't a word on my tongue, Lord,
that you don't already know completely.
5 You surround me—front and back.
You put your hand on me.
6 That kind of knowledge is too much for me;
it's so high above me that I can't fathom it.
7 Where could I go to get away from your spirit?
Where could I go to escape your presence?
8 If I went up to heaven, you would be there.
If I went down to the grave,[a] you would be there too!
9 If I could fly on the wings of dawn,
stopping to rest only on the far side of the ocean—
10 even there your hand would guide me;
even there your strong hand would hold me tight!
11 If I said, "The darkness will definitely hide me;
the light will become night around me,"
12 even then the darkness isn't too dark for you!
Nighttime would shine bright as day,
because darkness is the same as light to you!
Romans 14:1-11 (CEV)
14 Welcome all the Lord's followers, even those whose faith is weak. Don't criticize them for having beliefs that are different from yours. 2 Some think it is all right to eat anything, while those whose faith [differs] will eat only vegetables. 3 But you should not criticize others for eating or for not eating. After all, God welcomes everyone. 4 What right do you have to criticize someone else's servants? Only their Lord can decide if they are doing right, and the Lord will make sure that they do right.5 Some of the Lord's followers think one day is more important than another. Others think all days are the same. But each of you should make up your own mind. 6 Any followers who count one day more important than another day do it to honor their Lord. And any followers who eat meat give thanks to God, just like the ones who don't eat meat.
7 Whether we live or die, it must be for God, rather than for ourselves. 8 Whether we live or die, it must be for the Lord. Alive or dead, we still belong to the Lord. 9 This is because Christ died and rose to life, so that he would be the Lord of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you criticize other followers of the Lord? Why do you look down on them? The day is coming when God will judge all of us. 11 In the Scriptures God says,
"I swear by my very life
that everyone will kneel down
and praise my name!"
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Psalm 139: 7 Where could I go to get away from your spirit?
Where could I go to escape your presence?
Romans 14: 7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
Over the past weeks, we've been doing this series of messages called, "Holey, Wholly, Holy" - note the different spellings - about how we can move from being a hole-y mess, to being more wholly the people we are called to be, in the holiness of God.
We've based the messages very loosely on John Ortberg's book, The Me I Want to Be. And we've talked about being. Expanding our sense of being. Being present with God in Time, being present with God in Spirit, in Mind, and in Relationships. Today we're talking about being present with God in community.
And here's the cool part. You came on a really good Sunday. Because the sermon part of the message is going to be kind of short. I'm disappointed, too. Those of you who were hoping for a really long sermon, please accept my deepest sympathies.
See, the church has this message about community that goes far, far beyond any talk. We call it Communion, or its more formal name - the Lord's Supper. Communion not only sounds like community, it's one of the sacred, sacramental signs of Christian community.
So, not only do you get to hear about community, you get to involve all 5 senses in it. You get to taste it, touch it, smell it, see it - you get to be IN community as part of this service of worship today.
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Community is a hot word. It's trending high. It's viral. People have virtual communities. Online communities. Global communities. There's a show on TV called, "Community." I've never seen it. I hear it's very good. But odd. Which, if it involves humans, is par for the course. Because human community is always a little off-kilter. That's just the way we're made.
In the very beginning of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, God looks at Adam and says, "It is not good for that boy to be alone." And that pretty much set the tone for human beings ever since. We're created to be in community. It's in our G-O-D DNA. We're created to be in community. With God. With other people. With creation. With the magnificent infinity of the universe.
Now, maybe you're kind of introverted, and that's putting too much pressure on you. Don't go crawling under the pew yet. You extraverts are going, "Yes!! I knew it!" Well, don't rub it in just yet, either. Because there's more to community than "not being alone."
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Is it even possible to be alone?
Can a human being ever be truly outside of community?
Here's something interesting. And kind of gross.
We know there are germs on our bodies. Sorry, it's true. But did you know that in and on your body, foreign microorganisms outnumber your own cells 10 to 1.# Every one of us is literally crawling with microbes, and bacteria, and really icky little creepy things. Yeah. Makes you look a little sideways at who's sitting next to you. A 200-pound man carries 2 to 6 pounds of undocumented alien microbes.# Ew. They're on us, they're in us. We're walking ecosystems for 10 times as many creatures as ourselves. Most of them are good. We couldn't live without them.
Now, if you're not too grossed out, apply that to what God says way back in Genesis. "It is not good for him [or for her] to be... alone." We can't be alone, even if we want to. Not only are we created for community, heck, we ARE communities. We're walking Farmvilles. And we don't even know it. Community's gone viral.
But it's not just the teeny-tiny stuff that can't escape from. It's the really, really infinitely big.
In Psalm 139, verse 7 the writer sings to God, "Where could I go to escape your spirit? Where could I go to escape your presence?"
Does this person want to escape God? I don't know. It sounds more like a person who's been trying to run away from God, but finally reaches the point of giving up. There's no place a creation can be without the creator. There's no place a creation can live without the one who gives it a place to live.
We've gotta be less than microbes in God's eyes. And yet God is with us when we lie down and when we rise up. God is with us when we're silent and when we speak. God's presence surrounds us, hems us in before and behind, before we're born and after we die.
It's almost too much to take in. It's knowledge more wonderful than we can handle.
That's the community of God.
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Communities of people are always a little off-kilter. Maybe it's the microbes. The Apostle Paul, one of the first preachers in the first churches, begged with these newborn communities to get over their petty differences.
Some of them - because of God's commandments and family tradition - only ate Kosher. Others of them came from different faith and family communities; they were vegetarians. (If this was present day, there'd be another group. Some of them would only eat what had been deep-fried. Like, deep-fried chicken, and pickles, and Twinkies.) The little church was getting into miniscule, picky fights and missing that they were big-picked - by God - to be the church. They were big-hand-picked to be the church for the big, big world that held them. These folks were called by God to be little, living cells of hope in a system that hardly knew they were there, and sometimes - fairly often - tried to wipe them out.
Paul says to the church in Rome, "Stop fighting and just EAT together." Stop fussing and just BE together. Paul knew that IF we're created by God, then WE ARE created for community. He knew that if we want to find God instead of trying to run away from God's presence... Paul knew that if we want to find God, the number one thing we have to do, is... open our eyes. Open our eyes to the fact - the undeniable fact that you can NOT exist outside community. It's in your head, it's on your body, it's of your spirit. There is nowhere outside community you can ever be.
Without community, you can't be the me you want to be, because without community there is no you.
Like it or not, you are inextricably, irrevocably, inter-twine-dedly knit together, bound together, glued together, from your deepest, tinest cells, in community. God made you that way. God made us that way.
Whether that's good news or bad news, it's true news. And there's no escaping it. You are not only made for community, you are community in a very physical and very spiritual way.
So if you want to know God - and please hear this because it's so critical, so basic to anything in faith - you have to stop trying to get away. You have to start every day, trying to get along, trying to build up community because that's all there is. This is it.
We share the same air. We share the same earth. We share the same microbes. Who knew? We share the same spirit, the same indelible imprint of our maker.
So let us share the same song. Let us share the same prayers. And let us share the community. Pass it around. And live.
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